


i'll keep your heart warm (if cascade ocean wave blues come)

by constellore



Series: suddenly this summer it's clear (i still got love for you) [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Agender Kozume Kenma, Alternate Universe - Percy Jackson Fusion, Angst with a Happy Ending, Camp Half-Blood (Percy Jackson), Child Abandonment, Families of Choice, First Kiss, Gen, HQSwiftWeek2020, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Not Really Character Death, Past Character Death, Snapshots, i know what this looks like but i PROMISE YOU it's not really a major character death, no PJO knowledge needed to read :), tags contain spoilers from here on out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:14:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26717314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/constellore/pseuds/constellore
Summary: Kenma’s eyebrows raise. “Is there something else after you?”The kid pinches the bridge of their nose. “Probably, but you’re—” They glance up to peer around the street nervously, as if another monster’s just around the corner. Tetsurou would have thought it ridiculous years ago, but, now, he sets his jaw and joins in on the search.“You’re demigods,” they finally finish, their voice barely above a hiss.“So are you,” Kenma points out quietly, matter-of-fact as ever.(AKA: Tetsurou Kuroo, a teenager with the blood of a god, has been on the run from the hordes of monsters hunting him and his best friend, Kenma, for years. When Tetsurou and Kenma meet Morisuke, a fellow demigod, Tetsurou goes against his better judgement and asks Morisuke if he wants to run away with them. He has no idea of the impact that his offer will have—both for better and for worse.)
Relationships: Kozume Kenma & Kuroo Tetsurou, Kozume Kenma & Yaku Morisuke, Kuroo Tetsurou & Yaku Morisuke, Kuroo Tetsurou/Yaku Morisuke, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: suddenly this summer it's clear (i still got love for you) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1940110
Comments: 29
Kudos: 51





	i'll keep your heart warm (if cascade ocean wave blues come)

**Author's Note:**

> To LITERALLY NO ONE'S SUPRISE, I'm late for this haha. This series is inspired in varying parts by "seven", "peace", and "this is me trying" from folklore as well as Thalia, Annabeth, and Luke's friendship from the PJO series. (Okay, forewarning: I haven't reread that series in literal years, so be gentle with me lol). To be honest, this got... massively out of hand, as you can probably tell from me dragging out ONE DAY'S PROMPT into a 5 part series, but I hope you guys enjoy it anyway haha. BIGGGG thanks to my AMAZING friend [soysaucemachine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soysaucemachine/profile) for beta-ing, you are a LIFESAVER dude. An additional big thanks to all of my other lovely friends who helped me stay motivated! :D
> 
> Anyway... this has lingered in my drafts for FAR TOO LONG and I'm tired of lingering on word choice, so out into the void it goes!

The store has three cheap cameras.

Three cameras, and Tetsurou has his back to two—Kenma blocks the other, effortless with a year of practice as Tetsurou crouches down to the lowest shelf and pretends to scour the ingredients of the soup can in his grip. It isn’t much, not by a long shot, but they haven’t eaten since yesterday morning, so it’ll have to do. 

The blanket of yellow-grey dust that sprawls across the shelves is ripped by tarnished silver cans, the labels a faded off-white, and grime shudders through the flickering light from the lights that beam overhead like a searchlight in the haze. From the window, the night sky looms ahead, promising both relief and an oath that their lives will come to an end sooner rather than later, their last breaths punctuated by screams and blood splattered on the asphalt in one of New York’s back alleys.

Tetsurou doesn’t mean to sound ungrateful—he’s had it better than a lot of other demigods, so far, based on what Kenma’s mother had said, before—

Well.

Maybe he does mean to sound ungrateful. He thinks that he deserves that much.

It’s not like Tetsurou _asked_ for his father to fall in love with some Olympian deity who subsequently birthed a half-god, half-human kid, or for demigods like himself to constantly get sniffed out by the monsters of Greek myth, which meant any chance he ever had of living a life with any semblance of normalcy went down the drain years ago. And it’s not like he asked for his father to keep it a secret for as long as he could, until Tetsurou was attacked on the way home from school by a battalion of hellhounds in fourth grade, only saved thanks to Ms. Kozume’s quick thinking and propensity for preparedness. And it’s not like he asked his father to kick him out soon after, once he realized that having a demigod child was more of a liability than he thought.

But still. He’s lived through it all, and Ms. Kozume was clear after she took him in—most demigods are lucky to reach their teenage years—so, despite it all, he tries to consider it a blessing that he’s able to spend the night before his fourteenth birthday rummaging for supplies in some corner store deep in the winding alleyways of New York, a little more than a year from what remains of Ms. Kozume’s apartment, furniture overturned and spattered with blood.

“We’re running out of pain meds,” Kenma says quietly as they brush a stray hair away from their face, effectively slashing Tetsurou from his stupor.

Tetsurou suppresses a sigh and tucks the can of soup into his bag. His fingers are nearly numb in the anesthetic cold of stale air, dust, and the faded cigarette smoke from the cashier’s still-smoldering ash tray shoved behind the magazine that currently obscures their face in bright swatches of sickeningly neon pink and green.

“‘Kay,” he mumbles.

The bell at the entrance of the store rings with the finality of a funeral, and it’s only because of the two years of practice under his belt that Tetsurou doesn’t jump. He trusts Kenma to let their eyes wander up to the newcomer, nonchalant as ever, and if there’s anything amiss, Kenma will tap his shoulder twice, and they’ll find a way to sneak out.

They haven’t, yet, though, so Tetsurou keeps his eyes trained on the can of chilli that he stuffs into his backpack, counting the seconds that pass with the ingredients on the label— _water, black beans, distilled vinegar, tomato concentrate_ —until his stomach turns. “How’s your sister?”

“Fine,” they say slowly—a non-answer, not _“she’s sick”_ and not _“good”_ —not quite an indication of alarm but not one of comfort, because they don’t know what to make of whatever’s just walked in. 

Tetsurou stands up just before Kenma ducks down beneath the shelves and pulls him down with them, eyes lollipop wide. 

“Shit,” they hiss suddenly.

They elbow to the windows at the front of the store—or, at least, Tetsurou assumes that they do. Regardless, he presses his back against the shelves, the dagger he swiped from Ms. Kozume exactly four days before she died burning his forearm from where it’s stuffed up the sleeve of his hoodie. 

“Shit,” he echoes, and immediately jolts back behind the shelves.

Just outside the fogged-up, dust-smeared windows, there’s a cyclops, illuminated by flickering streetlights and shrouded in rain. The mortal at the cash register doesn’t notice anything, obviously—Ms. Kozume always talked about how most mortals, except for those who could see through the mist like she could, couldn’t see monsters like how those with the blood of a god could. Tetsurou’s never known a mortal well enough to ask if that was true, thanks to formative years spent being dragged halfway across the United States, first by his father, then Ms. Kozume, then by his own need to criss-cross the streets of New York state to stay alive, but given the amount of attacks that mortals have seemed to ignore, he’s forced to admit that she was probably right.

It’s at times like this that Tetsurou really wishes that he was a mortal, because he absolutely does not want to see the monster outside, or its pasty, hair-lined skin lined in grotesque, rotting wounds and scars, and, if it’s possible, he wants to see the single blood-shot eye in the middle of its cracked forehead even less.

There’s no point in asking what—or, rather, _who—_ it’s looking for.

“Can we get out of here without it noticing?” Tetsurou mutters under his breath.

Kenma gnaws their lip as they study their surroundings with a furrowed brow. “Back door,” they reply. “We can hide out in the bathroom, but there’s no way it won’t find us. Cashier’s gonna notice.”

Their discussion’s halted by what sounds uncannily similar to a roar, followed shortly by a scream, and Tetsurou peeks around the shelf to the windows. 

He’s not really sure what he expected, but it certainly wasn’t for it to be strangling a kid who’s gotta be eleven or so, but is still somehow armed with what looks suspiciously similar to a traditional Greek sword.

“Fuck,” Tetsurou hisses, pressing his back against the shelves yet again.

Kenma peers around, and all of the blood drains from their face in an instant.

Tetsurou _knows_ what he’s supposed to do now. They’re not obligated to save the kid, by any means—it’s not like they know them, and Tetsurou wouldn’t say that they’ve ever been saviors or heroes in any sense of the word. It’s their lives before anyone else’s, just like it’s always been since Kenma’s mom was murdered by that hellhound last year, leaving them to fend for themselves. And, if the cyclops is distracted with killing that kid, that’ll mean Tetsurou and Kenma will have enough time to try to get away—there’s a motel parking lot across the street, and, at this point, Tetsurou’s pretty confident in his ability to hotwire a car. Not to mention that this cyclops has been tailing them for weeks, and this could be their chance to lose it once and for all.

He _knows_ what he’s supposed to do, but— 

“Come on,” Tetsurou hisses as he motions to the cyclops currently throttling the kid outside.

Kenma whirls around with an affronted expression, and Tetsurou pretends not to wince.

He knows it’s idiotic, and, frankly, if Kenma had suggested it, he probably would’ve looked at them like they were crazy, too. Still— 

Well, he can’t really pinpoint it, to be honest. There’s something different about _knowing_ you could save the life of a person right in front of you. Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s the fear in the kid’s eyes. Maybe they remind him of himself.

It doesn’t really matter what it is, in the end, because he shrugs off his backpack and zips up his coat, introspection be damned. He’s just a nice person. That’s good enough for him.

“Come on. It doesn’t look that strong, and if there’s the kid, that’s three of us, right?”

Kenma’s glare intensifies, but at least they don’t say that it’s entirely possible that there are more monsters hiding and that the kid’s probably going to be too weak to help them fight.

“Just a quick surprise attack—I distract it, you shoot it with your bow?” Tetsurou adds quickly.

“We’re gonna need to find more arrows soon,” Kenma mutters, and Tetsurou knows they’ve given in.

“Okay, then,” Tetsurou grins, before he turns to look through the window yet again as his mouth bleeds into a scowl. “I go out first, distract it, you sneak out from the back, go around, and shoot it?”

Kenma’s jaw sets as they shrug the backpack on, but for all intents and purposes, that’s agreement. Resigned agreement, but agreement nonetheless.

Tetsurou slips out of the aisle, his practiced nonchalance damn near perfected, even as he studies the cyclops out of the corner of his eye. The kid doesn’t seem to notice him yet—and if they know what’s good for them, they’ll pretend not to until Tetsurou gets closer, though whether or not the kid notices him won’t matter nearly as much as if they notice Kenma. 

The cyclops roars again from outside, muffled by the glass, and it takes all of Tetsurou’s self-control not to wince.

“Really storming out there,” the cashier drones, dust-gray eyes dead behind the heaviest eyeliner that Tetsurou’s ever seen.

“Yeah,” Tetsurou huffs, his smile stretched in all the wrong places, but he knows that it’ll look perfectly fine to them. “Have a nice night.”

The cashier nods before they turn back to nursing their slushie, and Tetsurou inhales quickly before he shoves out of the store.

The cyclops turns around immediately as soon as the door shuts behind him with a faint click. “What—”

“Oh man,” Tetsurou mutters as he fishes his dagger out of his sleeve. “Found one with instincts, I guess.”

The kid’s eyes go saucer-wide, and Tetsurou would usually find it funny, but, for now, he’s more preoccupied with the cyclops in front of him.

The cyclops’ shock lasts barely a second before its mouth carves into a wide grin, bloody teeth speckled with rot, and Tetsurou swallows down a wave of nausea at the stench of its breath.

“Two of you!” it rumbles eagerly. “Delicious.”

“See, here’s the thing, though—” Tetsurou forces himself to grin, posture nearly casual, despite the fact that he’s poised to attack. “—if you want to eat me, you’re gonna have to catch me, too. And we demigods can be pretty hard to catch, don’t you think?”

The cyclops scowls, and Tetsurou prays that Kenma hurries the hell up. It’s not like he can’t take on a cyclops by himself, just that he’d really, really rather not. They’re relatively slow, sure, but their stamina and physical strength is insane, which makes sneak attacks a way better strategy.

“That’s ridiculous,” the cyclops growls before it holds the kid in its clawed grasp up to the light. “I caught this one, didn’t I?”

“That you did,” Tetsurou says patiently as he inches to the side, hopefully away from where Kenma’s going to pop out with their bow any second now. “But they’re pretty tiny, right? Aren’t the tiny 

ones pretty stringy?”

The kid’s eyes flash bloody murder, and the sheer absurdity of the situation almost makes Tetsurou snicker.

The cyclops frowns and tilts its head to the side just slightly. “I guess so. Why—”

Before it can so much as finish its sentence, an arrow explodes through its neck with near surgical precision. The cyclops bursts into a puff of dust, and the poor kid in its grasp goes tumbling to the ground.

“That one sure was a chatterbox,” Tetsurou holds up a hand for a high five as Kenma crosses the parking lot with a scowl.

They lean up to high five Tetsurou with a sigh. “Sorry. Got held up by the cashier.”

Tetsurou winces. “Did you—”

He’s cut off by a furious, “What the hell?” 

He whirls around to the kid, and, from this close, it’s easy to see that they’ve gotta be somewhere around his age, despite the fact that they’re even shorter than Kenma. What they’re wearing isn’t really clear, thanks to the dust, but their hair’s shorter than Tetsurou’s and some sort of dusty blond. He’s pretty sure they’ve got freckles, but it’s kind of hard to tell with all the scrapes and dirt.

Honestly, given the circumstances, Tetsurou probably would’ve laughed at their expression, especially since their entire body was coated in dust, but he just barely manages to smother it. Instead, he holds out a hand for the kid to take, but they scoff loudly and pull themself up alone.

“I had it handled,” they say haughtily.

Tetsurou glances over at Kenma, who’s currently glaring daggers into the back of his head, and promptly pretends that he didn’t.

“Well, I dunno about that,” Tetsurou says cheerfully. “Since, y’know, Kenma here saved your life and all.”

This, evidently, is the wrong thing to say because, somehow, the kid’s sea-glass glare intensifies before they turn to Kenma. “Thanks,” they mutter begrudgingly.

“Don’t mention it,” Kenma mumbles before they dig their arrow out of the pile of dust in the middle of the cracked sidewalk. 

“So...” Tetsurou crosses his arms over his chest. “I’m Tetsurou, fourteen, he/him. You are?”

Kenma glares, but tomorrow’s basically his birthday, so the lie can’t really hurt.

He’s not really sure why he’s so insistent on knowing their name, but it’s probably got something to do with their apparent fury despite the fact that Tetsurou and Kenma had so clearly just saved their life.

Instead: “You need to go,” they say firmly.

Kenma’s eyebrows raise, and Tetsurou would probably be proud of how much they’re talking, in different circumstances. “Is there something else after you?”

The kid pinches the bridge of their nose. “Probably, but you’re—” They glance up to peer around the street nervously, as if another monster’s just around the corner. Tetsurou would have thought it ridiculous years ago, but, now, he sets his jaw and joins in on the search. 

“You’re demigods,” they finally finish, their voice barely above a hiss.

“So are you,” Kenma points out quietly, matter-of-fact as ever.

Meeting another demigod _is_ a rare thing—you don’t exactly have time to make friends while you’re running for your life from all manner of monsters—but from the way this kid’s acting, Tetsurou’s not quite sure if he’s _ever_ met another demigod before. 

“You’ve gotten claimed by your parent, then?” Tetsurou says casually as Kenma tosses a glare over their shoulder.

The kid swallows hard. “None of your business.”

“I haven’t been,” he continues blithely, “not officially, anyway, but I’m pretty sure I’ve narrowed it down pretty well from what my dad told me about my mom. Kenma here—”

“It’s gonna reform,” Kenma says, their voice razor-sharp despite how slow it is. “Say what you want, and hurry up.”

The kid’s eyes narrow. “You’ve met that thing before?”

“Yeah, it’s been after us for weeks, but we haven’t ever gotten that close to it before.” Tetsurou shrugs as he kicks at the pile of dust next to his scuffed, stained sneakers. “Reforms about three hours after you kill it. Really took us by surprise the first time.”

“I’m sure,” they say coolly.

Kenma sighs heavily and casts an exhausted glare over their shoulder at Tetsurou. “He wants to ask if you want to come with us.”

“Are you crazy?” they snap viciously, a far cry from their distant nature a mere two minutes before, a tsunami against the shore. “You can’t be serious.”

Tetsurou’s grin goes Cheshire sharp. “We’re trying to help.”

“If you want to come, we need to hurry,” Kenma adds as they shift on their heels, a clear command for both of them to shut the hell up.

Tetsurou shrugs again. “Kenma and I are gonna go, before it reforms. If you want to come with, you can.”

The kid’s laugh is a bitter, panicked thing that sparks empathy despite Tetsurou’s best efforts to the contrary as the kid wraps their arms around their own bone-thin shoulders. “Come with you, huh? Where?”

Kenma glances at Tetsurou from the corner of their eye, their irises nearly ebony in the hazy, smoke-pierced streetlights. 

Tetsurou shoves his hands into his pockets. “Wherever we need to.” 

Lightning tumbles over the horizon.

“We gotta go, Tetsurou.” Kenma elbows his side.

Tetsurou hesitates. He’s got no reason to wait. “I know—”

“Why even ask me?” the kid demands suddenly. “You’re just going to get hurt.”

Tetsurou crosses his arms, previous hesitation forgotten. “Well, you’re going to die here. It’s not like you can deny it.”

“You’re not—” The kid whirls around to stare at the pile of dust that drifts away with the November wind. 

He’s shaking, but Tetsurou pretends not to notice. 

“My mom said that they would come after me. More than anyone like me. More than her. When she—” His voice cracks and flips into something bitter, silver-stake sharp. “When she told me to go. You have to know that.”

Kenma’s expression flips into something that Tetsurou can just barely decipher. “You’re going to die if you stay here,” they repeat sharply. “Whether you’re a son of Poseidon or not.”

The confirmation settles in Tetsurou’s stomach, a stone to the bottom of the sea, and he can see it reflected in the kid’s eyes. 

It’s dangerous to be a demigod, full stop—it doesn’t matter who your parents are. But, according to the rumors that Tetsurou’s heard, for the kids of the Big Three—Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades—even a walk down the street is a suicide mission. All demigods are powerful, but kids of the Big Three are supposed to be ridiculously overpowered if they have time to actually develop their powers with a talented trainer. Apparently, because of that, years ago, the Big Three made some pact that they wouldn’t have any more kids in order to avoid upsetting the world’s fragile balance. 

Tetsurou’s not exactly surprised that they broke it—gods are nothing if not impulsive and fickle. 

The kid’s voice is exhausted. “How’d you know?” 

Kenma tilts their head just slightly as a strand of peroxide-blonde hair falls over their eyes. “You manipulated the rain. Not much, but to keep you a little drier.”

The kid runs a hand through their hair, cropped short and uneven, as they glare Tetsurou down with the intensity of a hurricane tearing through the roaring sea. “You’re going to die if I come with you.”

“We’ve been doing this for years.” Tetsurou shoves his hands into his pockets with feigned nonchalance. “A bit disappointing you don’t believe in us at all.”

The kid swallows. “You’re strangers.”

Tetsurou shrugs. “And we’re strangers getting hunted for sport, so I think that gives us some common ground, don’t you? If the hunters can stick together, why can’t the hunted, huh?”

The kid grits his teeth. “Because it’s easier for them to find us.”

“They’re going to find us either way,” Kenma says suddenly, sharply, and tugs on Tetsurou’s sleeve, hard, before they turn back to the kid with a steely glare. “We all need to go, _now,_ together or not.”

Tetsurou inhales sharply. He’s not quite sure why he’s so fixated on this, on the kid—they remind him of himself, of Kenma, maybe, of a future that might’ve reared its head had they been left alone. As much as he loved to wax poetic about his own inner goodness, the fact of the matter was that he had always been a selfish person. So as much as empathy coils in the pit of his stomach, the voice in his head won’t stop mumbling that they’re _just like him,_ just like them, and if it were Tetsurou, well, staying in a group was dangerous, he knew, but if it were him—

“Are you coming?” Kenma prompts as they fiddle with the rusted zipper of the windbreaker Tetsurou had outgrown years before.

The kid shifts his weight from foot to foot as Kenma casts a knowing glance in Tetsurou’s direction. He’d stick his tongue out, probably, normally, but here, now—

“Morisuke,” the kid admits. “Morisuke Yaku.”

“You can come along with us,” Tetsurou repeats. “We’re going to a safe house. Safety in numbers, and all that.”

Morisuke reminds him of a hurricane; their eyes spark with thunder and the roar of waves against a cliffside, and Tetsurou doesn’t doubt that if they wanted to, _really_ wanted to, they could probably kill Tetsurou and Kenma right here, right now. But, to Tetsurou, in this moment, shrouded in the shadows that lick up the sides of the alley, surrounded by a graveyard of mold-speckled trash, and coated in the nauseating stench of cigarette smoke and oil that clings to the roof of Tetsurou’s mouth like the news of a death, they look like nothing more than a child.

They are all children, after all, albeit children who’ve seen too much, too fast, children who cling to fading memories of homes torn apart too soon, children who cling to dreams when they can and kill because they can’t. They are children, and Tetsurou holds out a hand for Morisuke to take.

Morisuke doesn’t hesitate this time.

::<\------------------->◇<\-------------------->::

It’s uncanny, really, how easily Morisuke has slipped into Tetsurou and Kenma’s lives. Tetsurou’s never been one to believe in things like destiny, but as bothersome as Morisuke sometimes is with his snarky comments and penchant for kicking whoever annoys him in the shins, it’s hard for Tetsurou to imagine that running into him was anything but the work of the Fates.

He’s kind of trigger-happy, sure, and his grip on his powers is questionable at best, most days, but he’s clever, supportive, and confident. Tetsurou thought of him as weak, once upon a time, making up for strength with tsunami-like retorts, but despite his inability to do much more than control a few drops of rain, he’s remarkably powerful. Loyal, too, and he never presses for information other than what Tetsurou and Kenma are willing to give.

“Y’know,” Morisuke calls out suddenly, his voice muffled by the stolen scarf knotted around his nose, faint freckles stark against his frost-ridden flush. “We wouldn’t be so cold right now if you’d taken my suggestion to stop at that rest stop earlier.”

… Morisuke’s remarkably clever, supportive, confident, powerful, loyal, and understanding, but that doesn’t mean he’s not annoying.

“Oh, ha ha.” Tetsurou grumbles dryly as he rubs his hands together. “We got a mile further, though.”

“Was it worth it?” Morisuke raises an eyebrow sarcastically.

“We’ll see,” Tetsurou mumbles as he attempts to rub away his goosebumps.

Morisuke huffs, arms crossed, as he steals a glance back at Kenma, who’d managed to fall asleep wrapped in a sleeping bag barely fifteen minutes after they’d managed to break into a construction site. There’s walls and a ceiling, but most of the windows are cracked, if present at all, which doesn’t make it much better than outside.

“Well,” Tetsurou starts, the pit of his stomach knotted with guilt, “I bet you were at the beach _now,_ Mr. Mountains-Are-Superior.”

It’s a dumb fight, honestly, and the last time Kenma had caught them bickering about it, they’d sighed so deeply that Tetsurou questioned his existence for a good three minutes.

Morisuke rolls his eyes. “This again? Seriously? If I was at the beach, I’d still be freezing half to death.”

“Not _here_ , obviously.” Tetsurou rolls his eyes. “A beach in Brazil, or something. In the tropics, somewhere. Bet you wish you were there.”

“Yeah, I could practice my powers by dumping the ocean on you,” Morisuke snaps back, though it lacks the heat of his comments earlier.

Tetsurou raises an eyebrow. “You think you can control more than a couple drops of water? Really?”

Morisuke flips him off with a scowl. “Whatever. The mountains are where it’s at. I vote for hiking in the Adirondacks once it gets warm.”

Tetsurou grimaces exaggeratedly. “We move every couple days and you wanna walk for _fun?_ In the _wilderness?_ I knew you were crazy, but that’s—”

“Less people, less monsters,” Morisuke points out. “Especially when you get really far out. Only ones that’ll make it out there are ones that are really dead-set on us. Not many monsters wanna trek through the woods for a couple stringy kids, and besides, we’ll be out of the way enough that most of ‘em won’t really be able to smell us, anyway.”

“There’s no supplies up there, though, and it’d be hard to hike back down for help.” Tetsurou says. “We’d have to steal a lot to make it up there.”

Morisuke shrugs, mouth twisted into something that Tetsurou can’t quite read. “That’s true.”

“I don’t know about you, but I don’t really wanna get arrested.” Tetsurou shrugs. “Would really put a damper on our summer.”

“We’d just have to be careful.” Morisuke mutters back, snow clumped in his eyelashes like powdered sugar.

“Why do you wanna go so bad anyway?” 

Morisuke’s silent, and for a moment, Tetsurou considers apologizing. He’s always had a knack for poking at things that he probably shouldn’t.

“My mom took me,” Morisuke mutters under his breath.

“Huh.” Tetsurou starts, and before he can add anything else, Morisuke’s fingers snap into fists on the railing, knuckles ice-white.

“In the summer, with my aunt, we used to—we’d pick different mountains every year.” he confesses. “That’s how she met my dad. On the mountains. By the shore, years ago. Fell in love quick. He promised he’d stay, but he never did.”

He’s shaking, just barely, with something other than the cold, and Tetsurou studies the concrete under his feet, the conversation coated with just enough ice for him to feel off-balance—a minute away from falling over the railing.

“Guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” Morisuke adds, thunderstorm fierce, under his breath.

“My dad didn’t know about me,” Tetsurou confesses, long after the silence drifts into the howling of the January wind. “My mom dropped me off with him. He never wanted a kid, y’know.”

He doesn’t say more, but with the way Morisuke’s looking at him, he doesn’t think that he has to. 

The silence isn’t quite uncomfortable—not like the gaps between Tetsurou and his father, that ached of an empty house and pristine papers stacked into perfect piles, stark in contrast to smeared jelly and crumpled homework tossed across a stained carpet. And it’s not quite comfortable, either, not like the quiet between Tetsurou and Kenma—shoulders pressed together beneath a streetlamp or in front of a dust-coated VHS in the familiar, candle-lit haze of Ms. Kozume’s living room, chocolate milk in hand. 

With Morisuke, the silence is nearly a living thing. Tetsurou can almost see its eyes gone fiery with the hurricane that seems to thrum underneath Morisuke’s pulse and its smile gone catlike with the cunning that never fails to creep along the edges of Tetsurou’s expression. It’s not conniving, but it’s not warm, either.

He can pretend not to look at Morisuke all he wants, but he can feel the nick of Morisuke’s eyes on him. There’s no comfort in it, no sympathy, but there’s a sort of understanding, foreign in its sincerity. Tetsurou feels like he’s won something, almost, but he couldn’t tell anyone what.

“So. The mountains.” Morisuke finally turns back to the skyline, smoke-lined and desolation-black. 

“We can find some time, maybe,” Tetsurou blurts out, but it’s worth it for the way Morisuke looks at him, eyes wide.

“Huh.” he says slowly, before the vulnerability is swiped away. “Bet you just want me to beg Kenma to go to the beach for a couple days in return.”

Tetsurou sees the metaphorical hand outstretched to drag them away from whatever strange territory they’d stumbled into, just then, and he takes it gratefully. 

“But you _would,_ right? If we went hiking?” he elbows Morisuke’s side.

“Uh, hell no.” Morisuke rolls his eyes. “It’s too hot, sand gets everywhere, seagulls steal your shit, there are too many people—”

“I don’t like sand,” Tetsurou calls out in a poor approximation of Morisuke’s voice as he sprints to avoid the kick Morisuke’s already aiming in his direction. “It’s coarse and rough and irritating. And it gets ev—”

“Shut up!” Morisuke screeches.

Tetsurou collapses into a fit of cackling.

“You sound like a hyena,” Morisuke mutters, finally managing to kick him, though it’s not as hard as Tetsurou expected.

Tetsurou sticks out his tongue. Petulant as hell, sure, but whatever. Morisuke sticks his out right back, so it’s not like he’s the only one.

“Fine,” Tetsurou throws a hand over his forehead melodramatically. “You hate the beach.”

“Tell you what, I’ll spend a whole damn summer at the beach when every monster drops dead.” Morisuke says sarcastically.

Tetsurou grins and pulls himself up. “I’m holding you to that. The moment all the monsters drop dead, we’re going to Hawaii.”

Morisuke frowns. “Why Hawaii?”

Tetsurou’s always been a realist—or at least, he’s always been a realist until lately, so he’s not really sure why he elaborates, since the whole situation’s nothing short of impossible. Still, the idea’s too welcome to let go of, no matter how much he knows that he needs to.

Tetsurou shrugs. “They’ve got beaches and volcanoes. My dad used to go on business trips. I always wanted to go along. Got the hiking and the beach, right?”

“Kenma would hate it,” Morisuke says carefully, face blank.

There’s no point in getting their hopes up, and Morisuke probably knows it even better than Tetsurou does.

Tetsurou shrugs. “They’d deal with it. It’s not like we’re going to the middle of nowhere, or anything. We’d just find a city and fly there. They’d probably end up liking it, in the end, they just wouldn’t say it.”

“Guess so.” Morisuke shrugs, before he pauses. “We could go to Japan, too, maybe. Or France.”

“Kenma’s got grandparents in Tokyo that they want to visit again sometime,” Tetsurou says. “We’d have somewhere to stay. Where else?”

Morisuke grins, really grins, and— 

Tetsurou knows that they’re probably not going to live to their next birthday. That there’s never going to be a world without monsters. But here, wrapped in panes of snow and lights faded in the winter’s hum, letting themselves pretend, something in Tetsurou’s chest hums with a warmth that bleeds through frozen bones to tingling fingers.

::<\------------------->◇<\-------------------->::

“This is insane,” Morisuke mumbles, breath hot against the back of Tetsurou’s neck, and Kenma rolls their eyes, even without seeing how Tetsurou’s breath catches. “I’ve never seen this many monsters at once. Thought they didn’t like to group up?”

It’s not the place for whatever little crush Tetsurou’s developed over the last couple months, it’s really not—there has to be at least twenty monsters out there by the bushes, still searching for them. He thanks his lucky stars, no matter how faded they are, that Kenma can create illusions like this. Still, despite their newfound abilities, it’s only a matter of time before the “bush” shrouding them flickers and the monsters locate them.

“I told you it’d get worse the closer we got,” Kenma mumbles. “They know we’re looking. They’re getting desperate.”

“That’s assuming it actually is where Koutarou says,” Morisuke mumbles. “We all remember what happened when he tried to find the gas station.”

Tetsurou would smile if he wasn’t so tense. They ran into Koutarou a couple weeks ago—according to him, he works for Camp Half Blood, which is the very same safehouse for demigods that Tetsurou and Kenma had heard about from the rumors that darted through back alleys and rotting warehouses in the dead of night. Morisuke didn’t believe Koutarou, not at first—monsters have been getting more creative, after all, since he agreed to team up with them. 

It’s not like Tetsurou can really blame him, no matter how annoying Morisuke’s arguments are. If he’s being honest, he doesn’t think that he would’ve made it nearly as long as he did on the streets without Kenma to have his back. For Morisuke to survive on his own that long, well,Tetsurou tries to forgive his bouts of paranoia. 

But no later than three days after they met, Koutarou had saved them from a monster that had nearly ripped Kenma apart and, thus, earned both Tetsurou’s trust and hours of yelling matches between Tetsurou and Morisuke across an empty warehouse in one fell swoop.

Still, despite Morisuke’s…vocal inhibitions, after that attack, Morisuke warmed up to Koutarou pretty quickly. Make no mistake—Morisuke still glares him down more often than he doesn’t, but Tetsurou is fairly sure that Koutarou’s at least partially earned Morisuke’s trust, which never has been and will never be an easy feat. 

Hell, even just a few weeks ago, Morisuke probably would’ve snapped back at Koutarou and Tetsurou with some snarky comment about how they couldn’t even be sure that Koutarou wasn’t a bloodthirsty monster, but, now, he merely grits his teeth and forces his shoulders to relax. 

As for Tetsurou a few weeks ago—he probably would’ve said something sarcastic in response, but, now, he suppresses the thought that if he dies here, tonight, he’ll never actually be able to tell Morisuke about his crush, which is probably the most ridiculous show of priorities since that time that their safehouse was raided and Koutarou grabbed his half-eaten bag of cheetos before his sword. It’s not like he actually expects anything to come of it. The whole appeal of their friendship is their bickering, really. To be honest, he kind of doubts they’d be friends at all if they weren’t forced together. Not that he’s angry about it, obviously, but—it’s always been a weird thought, thinking about what their lives would’ve looked like if they didn’t spend them running from alleyway to warehouse, corner store to park bench.

Morisuke interrupts Tetsurou’s train of thought by zipping up his jacket with a huff. “Well, assuming that’s true, we’ve only got one more stretch before we get there.”

“It’s the riskiest, though,” Koutarou winces. “A lot of monsters like to hide out around the borders when word gets around that demigods are coming. And, I mean, no offense, but you guys are pretty powerful, so…pretty sure every monster in a five mile radius knows.”

Tetsurou’s mouth is bone dry and tastes like blood, but he can’t figure out why. 

He swallows, and tries for confidence. “We’ll figure it out.”

Kenma and Morisuke turn to stare. Kenma’s face is pinched into a scowl, Morisuke’s is nearly blank, and, for the first time that night, Tetsurou knows he failed.

Things slip into a nightmare not long after that.

How it all went down, Tetsurou can’t quite say—all he knows is that one minute, they were darting across the beach of Long Island towards the camp, and the next, they were surrounded by what had to be a battalion of hellhounds, Kenma’s wispy glamors nothing against them.

How it all went down, Tetsurou can’t say, but the camp’s just over the next hill and the blood pouring from his nose tastes like rust.

He lost his favorite dagger somewhere along the shore, between Morisuke’s feeble attempts to control the rain that arcs in torrents around them while he nurses what’s gotta be a broken wrist and the fury that grappled at his face with reckless abandon.

Tetsurou swings one around, now, technique lost to the blur of shadows and blood. Koutarou’s up front, somewhere. His feet slam against the ground as claws shriek behind him.

“Morisuke, hurry the hell up!” 

It doesn’t—he knows it doesn’t—do anything, but they’re close. There’s some sort of barrier ahead, Koutarou said, behind the clump of trees, and adrenaline pulses with his footfalls.

“Go!” Koutarou—Kou, he thinks it’s Kou—wails as a fury whips through the air above them.

It’s a blur of blood and thunder; hell itself, and he lost track of directions what feels like hours ago, though he’s only been fighting for a few minutes.

Tetsurou screams when Kenma crumples, tastes salt and blood, vision blurred by the rain that screams around them as thunder digs its claws into the night sky.

There’s a fury, and Tetsurou barely sees it, barely feels the sharp drag across his arms, his chest. Koutarou’s screaming something, but Tetsurou can’t see past the dagger in his grip, slick with blood that might be his, flailing in the shadows that bite down over his eyes. 

The hellhound explodes into dust above him—it clings to his arms, eyelashes—but he’s stumbling through the mud, because Kenma’s just a _kid, dammit,_ and Tetsurou will _not_ —he _can’t_. Because...they want to finish playing Animal Crossing, and they want to go visit their grandparents in Tokyo again, and they—

They’re limp.

“Tetsu!” Koutarou screams above the rain, and Tetsurou’s ears are wailing as they hoist Kenma onto their back.

There’s blood, too much of it, and the hill’s steep, too far—he can barely see in front of him— 

He heaves for breath as he stumbles over a rock, and Morisuke _screams._

He can barely see, but he turns to see a cloud of dust pounded back into the mud. Morisuke stumbles up, vibrant crimson spreading across his stomach like a death warrant and Tetsurou’s breathing stops.

Until Koutarou plunges a dagger into the neck of the monster tailing him, and he remembers to run.

“Run!” Koutarou chokes, and the only reassurance left is the tell-tale, staccato stumbling behind him, even as hellhounds at the base of the hill howl.

They have—there’s got to be—another 500 feet, at least, and there’s another wave. His arm’s screaming, his nose has to be broken, his fingers are shattered. Kenma’s unconscious. Blood seeping hot down the back of Tetsurou’s neck. Pulse gone cold.

Koutarou’s side is a mess of blood, rain-slick. 

Morisuke—he’s—

Koutarou clings to Tetsurou’s side. “Keep going, we have—”

Morisuke shakes his head.

Lightning arcs.

“Are you fucking suicidal?” Tetsurou forces out, and Morisuke’s eyes flash dark.

“We need to go!” Kou’s screaming but he doesn’t mean it, they can’t—

Morisuke’s chest heaves, eyes onyx, and before Tetsurou can open his mouth, there’s something hot and rough against it, and he nearly drops his dagger.

“Run,” Morisuke spits as he shoves Tetsurou away. 

Shoves Tetsurou away, because Morisuke _just_ _kissed him._

“You—”

“Go.” Morisuke roars, waves upon the shore, rain arching around them, and—

Tetsurou runs. 

Kenma’s heavy on his back, his vision blurs in blood and rain, sliding down the hill, mud through his fingers, Koutarou grunting by his side.

There’s an explosion, no—an earthquake behind them. 

Tetsurou can hear screaming behind the ringing, and he’s scrabbling through mud, blood, until an arm wraps around his waist and his vision goes black.

::<\------------------->◇<\-------------------->::

Tetsurou sleeps, the first three days, and dreams in flashes of light, memories like burnt sugar. There’s sweet tea cloying on his tongue, just like the sort that his dad poured into plastic cups when he was a child, and he hears mumbling underwater as the sun burns a promise onto the back of his neck. He feels dried grass underneath his palms and dirt underneath his nails, and he can hear the creaking of the swing above the creek as the rope frayed. Faces burn in the back of his mind, too, but the eyes are blurred out, as if he’s walking through fog. There’s Kenma, with their loose, honey-gold braids at their chin, and Ms. Kozume, with her ebony curls and shaking hands. He doesn’t see Morisuke, but he can hear him—rambling about constellations and planets in hushed tones on one of the nights they clambered up to the roof of whatever warehouse they had broken into, and sees an explosion of guilt-white stars behind his eyelids.

He doesn’t dream much more after that.

He wakes up on a Tuesday morning, swaddled in the thinnest sheets he’s ever seen, but somehow they’re still softer than anything he’s ever felt. Only Koutarou and Kenma are by his side, their eyes swollen, and he asks.

He wishes that he didn’t.

It’s a rare thing, now, for people’s forms to be shifted right before death, to save them the pain, but Morisuke never asked his father for much, Tetsurou knows, and so it’s...fitting, he supposes, for Morisuke’s last, defiant wish to be to die on his own terms. It’s fitting, though rare, that his father agreed.

They might be at the camp, now, which is far more than just a safehouse—it’s nearly a society all on its own, led by Mr. Takeda, a well-meaning centaur, and Mr. Ukai, a minor exiled god, and designed not only to shelter demigods of every age and ability but to help them learn to protect themselves from the monsters that hunt them all—but things aren’t easy. 

Far from it. 

Tetsurou’s sent to the Hermes cabin with everyone else who hasn’t been claimed by their parent yet, and everyone’s… nice enough. He hasn’t slept in a real bed in years, but whenever his head hits the pillow, no matter how tired he is, he can barely sleep. When he does, he wakes screaming and shaking. 

He grapples for a warmth by his side that isn’t there, won’t ever be there again, and he sits in silence, every breath a burden as he muffles his sobs into his pillow. He can’t fight. The other demigods train, their voices raised to carry reassurances across a training arena, and it looks—comforting, almost. Supportive. But when Tetsurou sees it, his breathing goes erratic and his limbs go cold, and he doesn’t go near the arena again. The campers are kind, all of them, and he used to love talking, gossiping, bickering, but whenever he tries, his head swims and his mind goes blank. 

It’s more common, Tetsurou learns, for demigods to be claimed around others, and Kenma’s claimed the first week they’re there by a glowing sigil, symbolizing Hecate, the goddess of magic, darkness, light, and ghosts, of all people, which explains far too much and simultaneously nothing at all. Tetsurou’s happy for them, he really is, and he climbs up to the top of the Hecate Cabin to talk with Kenma and Koutarou almost every night. 

They talk every night, sure, but they talk around _it_ until they can’t. They talk around it until Mr. Takeda, the camp counsellor, sits them all down in the living room of the camp’s headquarters and tells them that he’s worried about them, until Tetsurou starts crying on the couch and Kenma pretends that that they’re not doing the same. They talk around it until they don’t, and it’s hell when they do, but after they’re done, after Mr. Takeda lets them get into a screaming match in the living room about whose fault it really is, after they’re all forced to admit that Morisuke made his own choice, well—Tetsurou sleeps through the night for the first time since he arrived.

Things aren’t fixed just like that, though, because that’s not how the world works. Tetsurou’s mind hisses what-ifs whenever it can, and he still sees everyone he’s lost in his mind’s eye whenever he closes his eyes at night. 

It’s not easy. But Tetsurou moves on.

And as he gets more comfortable, he makes friends. Daichi Sawamura, one of Hermes’ kids, is probably the first one, though Tetsurou’s about seventy percent sure the poor guy regrets talking to Tetsurou at all. Daichi wouldn’t say it, though—he’s way too nice for his own good, which is probably why he hasn’t murdered Tooru in cold blood yet, even though Tetsurou thinks he’s probably getting pretty damn close, especially when Tooru practices his charmspeak at dinner on Mad Dog. 

After Daichi, well, everyone else just kind of blends together. Daichi’s got two more demigod friends who arrived at camp at the same time as he did—Koushi Sugawara, one of Hecate’s kids, and Asahi Azumane, one of Aphrodite’s sons. Koushi’s got a boyfriend, Mattsun, and Mattsun’s friends with Tooru from the Aphrodite cabin, who’s basically glued to Hajime Iwaizumi’s side. Asahi’s partner is Wakatoshi from Nike’s cabin, who’s a little distant, but kind nonetheless, though not if you ask Tooru, and the point of all this is, well, once he gets to know even one person, everyone else comes along. It’s been years since he's had a family that’s been anything more than himself, Kenma, and Morisuke, so it’s odd, at first. He can’t help but stiffen whenever Tooru whines about Tetsurou’s hair or Daichi reminds Kenma to eat more at meals. His senses wail danger, but he swallows it down as best he can. 

It’s not easy. He’s positive that it never will be. 

But it gets easier, slowly but surely, and before he quite registers it, he’s been claimed by his mother after he leads a short trip to rescue a couple younger demigods from a horde of hellhounds, thanks to some quick-thinking and a complex strategy scrawled up on some wrinkled newspapers. He can’t say exactly why it was that, of all things, that made his mother notice him, but the gods have always worked in mysterious ways. 

As shocked as he is—as thrilled as he is—it’s the evening after that the realization really sets in. He wakes up surrounded by people he’s come to know, eats breakfast shoulder-to-shoulder with a table full of people nursing battle-scars and boasting eyes that still flash alight, and spends the rest of the day criss-crossing the camp in Manhattan’s summer haze, ducking under Suga’s “good-natured” punches, cackling at Koutarou’s owl puns, trading thinly-veiled digs about how obvious Tooru and Hajime’s pining is, and volunteering to take over meal duty for the younger Aphrodite kids so Asahi can help Kenma out with bleaching their hair again.

Campfires spark the horizon, burnt sugar courses through his veins with the half-eaten s’more that oozes across his fingers, and something, some feeling—pride, elation, protectiveness, something, a combination born of late-night conversations, sparring lessons, and afternoons spent darting through the emerald-speckled woods—burns through the air with the smoke, weaved in between Keiji’s low chuckles and Makki’s third attempt at explaining rickrolling to Ushiwaka. 

Tetsurou grins, wide, because it— 

It feels like home.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'd love it if you left a comment to fuel your local author gremlin! :D


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